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Helpful ideas. Squeaky value.
Helpful ideas. Squeaky value.
Someone emailed me a question I've been asked a lot: what is the role of the instructional designer, and how do you explain it to clients and SMEs? An awareness test video I stumbled across does a better job answering that question than any explanation I could write.
Slot machines pay out 90% of what you put in, and people still lose everything because they keep playing. That near-miss mechanic is a masterclass in sustained engagement. Your e-learning can do something similar, without the gambling debt.
When e-learning developers say they want more engaging courses, they usually mean more branching. But navigation type has almost nothing to do with engagement. What actually matters is whether the content connects to the learner's real world.
Most e-learning gets judged by how interactive it is or what tool built it. That's like judging a beer by its ABV. Different courses solve different problems, and the right one for the job is the best one.
People keep hunting for the right software feature to build their interaction, but the fix isn't a better tool. Here's the 3C model for building interactivity with whatever features you already have, plus a few ways to bend common interactions like flash cards and tabs to do more than they were built for.
Interactive hotspots do more than trigger clicks. Use them as invisible buttons to speed up production, or as barriers that block interaction with what's underneath. Here are three ways to put them to work in your next course.
